Will I love Bright Lights, Big City?

Set in the 1980s, it captures a time when sex, drugs, and parties fueled life. When the image of taking and consuming the best was a narcotic of its own. Restless, gorging, faceless encounters, aspiring to an empty illusion of excess with no rules and consequences you would never admit to.

Driven by desire. To be. To do. To cover the truth with a glib smile, a quick snort, and a slide into numbness so no one knows the smallness of your failures and you never have to admit to the quest of things you can never have. Love. Acceptance… show more.

I’ve been on a second-person narrator kick this year, both because I love the intimacy of the format and for my own novel-writing research. This book is such a romp.

It follows a guy with a bunch of problems he’s not talking about, among them a drinking problem, as he tries to stamp out those problems with chaotic fun. It teeters between light and dark in such an affecting way, all the humor with a tinge of pain. Plus, the voice is like candy.

It’s an ode to the dumbassery and bravado of youth that felt both nostalgic and voyeuristic. 

Bright Lights, Big City published in 1984 written by Jay McInerney captures 80s NYC from an outsider who experiences it head-on. I was drawn to the novel because I lived the same world and went to the club Heartbreaks but as an insider. McInerney’s lead character is a copy editor for a reputable publishing house and he is madly in love with his wife who is now a hot model and no longer has any interest in him. On top of that his mother just died of cancer and his younger brother comes to NYC hoping he will be strong… show more.